Concealed carry data botched by error

An alphabetical mix-up is likely the cause of incorrect concealed carry permit data recently published by newspapers across the state.

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By Tobias WallStaff Writer

The State Journal-Register

By Tobias WallStaff Writer

Posted Aug. 26, 2014 at 1:11 PM
Updated Aug 27, 2014 at 8:17 AM

By Tobias WallStaff Writer

Posted Aug. 26, 2014 at 1:11 PM
Updated Aug 27, 2014 at 8:17 AM

An alphabetical mix-up is likely the cause of incorrect concealed carry permit data recently published by newspapers across the state.

An Aug. 11 article in Carbondale's The Southern Illinoisan and an interactive map published the same day by the Chicago Sun-Times reported that there were just 48 active permits in Sangamon County.

According to the data used by The Southern and the Sun-Times, Sangamon County's 48 active permits mark the lowest per-capita active permit rate of any county in the state at a mere 0.02 percent.

The list also gave suspiciously low totals for other presumably gun-friendly counties. Neighboring Macon County was ranked 95th out of 102 with 382 active permits. At the bottom of the list along with Sangamon were both Metro-East counties — St. Clair and Madison — which had 233 and 121 active permits, respectively, and were ranked 100 and 101 on the list.

Figures provided Tuesday by the Illinois State Police showed there were actually 1,645 active concealed carry permits in Sangamon County as of Monday. There were 1,050 active permits in Macon County, 2,107 in St. Clair County and 2,656 in Madison County.

In other cases, sparsely populated counties were shown to have suspiciously high active permit totals. The data showed Mason County with the most active permits per capita. The supposed 2,024 permit holders made up over 14 percent of that county's population. But there are actually only 134 active permits there, according to the state police figures released this week — only 0.009 percent of the population.

The Southern cited state Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, a chief architect of Illinois' concealed carry law, as the source of the data. The Sun-Times used that same data in its Aug. 11 map, and The Decatur Herald & Review on Monday published a story using the data.

Alerted to the discrepancies during a phone conversation Tuesday, Phelps said the data, which was current as of July 29, came straight from the Illinois State Police. He said he sent it to The Southern on Aug. 6.

In comparing his list and the one published on the Southern's website, he caught the problem in the ‘M' and ‘S' portions of the alphabet, where totals for some counties were attached to names of different, similarly spelled counties.

For instance, Sangamon County was listed with Schuyler County's data. Macon County was paired with figures from Marion County and St. Clair County was listed alongside numbers from Phelps' native Saline County.

The Southern on Tuesday evening acknowledged the mix-up and said it would run a correction that likely would appear Thursday.

Page 2 of 2 - Current ISP figures state that there were 73,158 active permits statewide Monday. Another 87,183 permit applications were under review. The Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board had objected to 1,263 applications.